Because of wide public objection and possible repercussions, a bill before the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, that required single women under the age of 40 to provide the written consent of a guardian to get a passport, was thrown out of the assembly. The decision was welcomed by women’s groups and the public in general.
According to Mehr news agency, Fatemeh Rahbar, a member of the national security committee of the Majlis this week announced, “Because of objections at the first session of a workgroup on the passport bill of the Women and Family Policy Council affiliated to the parliament’s research center, the bill was removed from deliberations.” She continued, “We had disagreed with the bill when it was initially passed by the workgroup because a woman of 40 years of age is capable of making her own decisions. After research on the subject we realized that only a small number of women had committed any violations outside the country. These studies indicated that only 76 women did not qualify to travel outside the country without a guardian. Therefore, this (purported violations by women) could not be the source of our decision. The issue is completely removed from the table.”
Sharifi Sadr, the director general of women’s issues at Iran’s ministry of foreign affairs also spoke at the workgroup session. “We continue to be at a state of war. What has changed is its form. This is a soft war. They create tensions and challenges on the issue of women and enemies are looking to find fault. An issue that the West pursues is the absence of respecting women’s interests in Iran. The improper implementation of laws pertaining to women is an accusation that they throw at us. Their focus on this is so high that they are watching our every move. And act. The West has used (UN special rapporteur) Ahmad Shahid’s reports that refer to the announcements made by Iran’s representative in the women’s committee to claim that some provisions in our laws violate women’s rights. We must be careful to prevent our interviews, positions and comments from being used against Iran because one of the sources others use are our media and interviews.”
Fateme Sadr continued, “This bill has created serious tension and bearing among the public and even among respected men. Because of lack of proper understanding of the proper timing in raising this bill, feminist and inimical groups launched anti-Islamic and anti-revolutionary propaganda thus creating an opportunistic atmosphere for them.”
A few hours prior to this session, Fars news agency had published a statement titled, “Statement by People’s Groups” that criticized the bill. The statement in part read, “In our Islamic revolutionary discourse and while respecting and lauding the legitimate concerns of Majlis representatives, we, as representatives of people’s and media groups active in women’s and family affairs, believe that the articles of this bill (related to the need for a guardian) cannot meet the goals of the initiators of the bill on one hand while on the other in addition to creating unnecessary and illegal issues for single women will also bring serious harm and consequences.”
The statement continued, “Our faith stresses on the ethical dictum that respect for parents’ views and efforts to obtain their heart’s consent. But the need of a guardian for travel purposes has till now not been mentioned by Shiite decrees and such restrictions have not been seen for women beyond the mature age. In addition, according to articles 19, 20, and 21 of the constitution men and women enjoy equal rights. According to articles 956 and 959 of the civil code the civil rights of people cannot be whole or partially taken from them, even on their demand. According to the provisions of article 1210 of Iran’s civil code, a consequence of attaining legal age is that people acquire complete identity and enjoy all rights specified in law. Such restrictions can only be imposed by government decree and the opinion of the state expediency council during emergency or corrupting situations but only temporarily until the source of corruption is removed. Therefore, so long as everybody is accepted to be innocent until proven guilty and there is good will regarding Muslims, the rights of a large segment of women cannot be denied because of violations of a small group.”
This bill was originally introduced by representative Naghvi Hosseini who told Shargh newspaper that his reason for requiring a guardian stemmed from “the Iranian man’s honor,” and added, “our honor does not allow a woman to leave the country without her father’s consent.”
It appears that as the next round of presidential elections approach and international pressure on the country continues to grow, Iranian decision makers have decided to retreat from pushing on this bill. Iran’s social media demonstrated wide joy and support for the removal of the bill.
